


where we find the wicked

by somethingfullofangst (sram)



Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Fate & Destiny, M/M, Magical World, Rebirth, Royalty, anime portag obviously, princess blah blah blah, tsiwbakd, untimely death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:13:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23410750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sram/pseuds/somethingfullofangst
Summary: The world goes on slowly without him being there at all. Maybe that's the way it was always supposed to be. He just didn't belong. Anywhere.AND THEN HE WAKES UPNot as a nobody, or a man struggling to pay the rent. But as some sort of chosen hero in a land where nobody knows he's truly a loser.
Relationships: Im Changkyun | I.M/Yoo Kihyun
Kudos: 3





	where we find the wicked

Who would've known that his entire fucking day would go to shit in a matter of minutes? 

It's highly possible that someone did know, but it sure as hell wasn't Kihyun.

It started out as just a bad day for him. His roommate housed a little horde of stray cats (whenever she found them, she adopted them straight off the streets, and it'd become too much like a limited edition episode of Hoarders ever since winter started for him to complain.) She would get too attached to them to actually rehome or put any of them into a well funded facility, so Kihyun had to learn to live with the demonic critters from early on in the year. They never shoveled responsibility on each other and each took turns in their spare time to change the various litter boxes and refill the gravity feeders she bought in bulk off Amazon. It just felt natural. Even if he didn't want them her babies were his babies too. 

However, he didn't plan on finding one nursing kittens under his bed, fighting him out of his room, and then using his only pair of work shoes as a makeshift litter box, and in his fit to escape her claws he'd closed the door, locking her away in there if only for half an hour. And that's just how it started.

He got into a fight with Woo-hee about her crazy cat obsession next. Missed his bus because he had to return home to get his wallet (fight the cat again, got tons of new war scratches too. Woo-hee thought up a few more degrading words to say in that short time span as well about his very own obsession with anime girls but whatever, right?) then run at least half the way to his place of work. 

Before he even got to clock in his boss stopped him, spun him around by the elbow, and said "I just don't think you're a good fit for this job. Your performance lately is awful. You come late, leave early; your appearance is always disheveled. You're not even in uniform… You know, a lot of people would love to work with this company, and it just doesn't seem like you're one of them. You already have three disciplinary warnings on file, so I just think it… It's time for you to depart the company." Kihyun couldn't even argue with this. It was half truth, half being tired as shit from working two jobs just to make ends meet. 

But maybe it was because of this bad, awful truth called his life that the Bad, Awful thing happened to him after leaving that Bad, Awful building. In fact, if he was never fired, maybe he would have woken up in his bed the next morning half-rested and dreadful to take on the day. 

The thought was the last one he remembers clinging on to. He was crossing the street when it happened. The pedestrian light was red, but he'd looked both ways like his ajumma taught him, so he thought it'd be safe to cross. Just two steps off the sidewalk was all it took-

It showed up on the news that evening. They called him suicidal, being a failure his whole life who just lost his job at one of the most popular electronic companies in the whole world (SamXoms, which all things considered, sucks ass.) They stamped a suicide prevention hotline over his face after a short speech about the pressure the "youth face in today's society", only to forget all about him in the next couple hours because some absurdly rich celebrity got new implants. 

That truck really was going too fast to stop according to the court hearing he'll never be able to make it to. His family fights over who's going to pay the majority of the funeral costs, who's going to be the one to lie the most on the stand about how much they knew and loved him. The truck driver gets off with only a slap on the wrist, but understandably he's too scarred to drive a truck ever again. 

His roommate is devastated for a short while, eventually turning his room into the kitty daycare she always wanted just to get over her grief. She shoves most of his favorite sweaters into the back of her closet, and when his family doesn't come to claim any of his other world possessions, she hides them in her mom's garage hoping one day she'll build the courage to just get rid of it altogether. 

The world goes on slowly without him being there at all. Maybe that's the way it was always supposed to be. He just didn't belong. Anywhere. 

For a stretch of time it seems he floats around in a void. It's dark and cold, but he's mostly numb to the core, floating through the abyss for days or hours or however long it takes for him to reach out his hand. It's not what he was expecting death to feel like, but then again, what was he supposed to expect? He didn't expect to leave his house one morning dressed to go to work but ended up getting off the bus at his own funeral service either. So he floats and floats and floats, and when it feels lighter it's a little bit faster, so he sails a bit. In a few more passages of time he reaches his open palms out towards a small opening of light right beyond his grasp, and he reaches and reaches until the tingling sensation buzzes all the way through his body, until he pinches the small dot of light until it grows three times the size and swallows him whole in a matter of seconds.

He hears his mother's crying voice on the day that he is born. She's told him about this before, how she cried because he had taken his first breath and the doctors assured them she wouldn't get to hear another one after that. It's obvious she is in pain, she cries and cries and cries and asks "What can we do?" but there's nobody to answer her. What can they do? What did they do? He takes a breath but it isn't half enough to even fill his cold lungs. Then the light seeps into his body and takes root, it breathes life into him, it cradles him in neverending warmth. 

When the light dies down he notices that his eyes are already open and they sting with a steady flow of unexplained tears. The curious face of a small blue eyed child manages to break through the blur after he blinks a few times to clear it up. Her ears are sharpened like a knife at the corners, peeking out from under her head of dark curly ringlets pulled into a very (very) messy topknot. 

When he groans its as if his entire body is jolted with electricity, each limb animatedly reacting to it. Fingers curl and uncurl against the silky sheets, a leg cramps wildly in different places he's sure there shouldn't even be any muscles, then his body arches off the bed- It all happens too fast for him to stop it. 

The girl yelps loudly in surprise, but her face is covered with a worried smile immediately afterwards. Even the crease in her brow is gorgeous to him, a perfect natural curve that compliments her wider eye shape. Maybe this is because the only thing he's seen is a first-person view of his own hands swinging around the void in slow motion trying to grab something. 

"You'r awake!" she says in this sort of thick accent he knows goddamn well he isn't familiar with. She continues by saying "Oh my God! I have to tell her Majesty!" before scampering away. He takes note of her flowy blue kimono (obviously not a traditional kimono, but the function remains the same). The rest of her outfit is just a whirlwind of blue and white as she leaves. One thing is for certain; those clothes don't look like anything anybody in their right mind would be caught dead wearing on his side of town. 

Which is…. Oh fuck. Where is he. 

-

The better part of the morning is spent convincing The Elder Witch Laina that he isn't the person they think he is while she prepares a tiny bubbling cauldron by the bed by dumping numerous oils, roots, petals, and one living bug that has antlers and at least 18 different legs underneath its arachnid-like body into the magically bubbling pot. She nods slowly once or twice, and Kihyun would take that as sympathy, except she has her entire face covered by a wine-red/snow-white mask adorned with plenty of jewels and a pair of what he assumes to be fake curled horns hidden behind it. Her cosplay is top notch, and with a title like Elder Witch he'd started questioning his own sanity from the time that the little handmaid introduced her to the empty room.

She didn't talk much outside of an unusual growl here and there, so the cake topper happens to be once the cauldron finishes bubbling up an unpleasantly overwhelming scent into the room, she nudges it towards him with a huff and he guffaws. "You want me to drink that?" he asks, and she snorts, so he tries again with: "Me? In my mouth. After you put that… Cr, creature in it?" 

"Body. Naked." she says slowly, and then mimics rubbing her own body to show what she means, and her voice is one low tone at first, until she hisses out and it sounds like a shriek. Somehow it's… What he imagined it to be. "You go to the spirit realm, and bring back curse." 

"I'm not sure you understand. This body isn't mine. In fact, my body isn't mine either. I think I was cremated? So you see there's no way that I-" 

She grumbles at the mention of cremation, and for the second time her voice dances between a low neutral tone and a deafening shriek mixed together seamlessly. "No. You are reborn! Fire hurts the body! If the body hurts, you can't come back to us!"

Kihyun, if he is honest, and he wants to be honest from now on because he's sure dishonesty landed him straight in whatever version of hell this is; he is scared shitless. 

He immediately sheds the first layer of the clothing he has on, a delicate silky white robe with ashen black lines curling through and beneath the fabric like its living there, even though he chalks it up to the swaying of the room whenever he stands, he can't ignore it. She doesn't remove her eyes from him still, if she even has them. The mask is made so that it covers her face entirely, with ruby red jewels in the place where holes for the eyes might normally be cut out. It's still unnerving that she's staring in his general direction, and he turns his back to her to further undress himself out of the numerous amounts of garments he's been wrapped in. 

"It is to keep body warm until soul finds entrance," she explains, like she can read his mind that's screaming at him "what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck what the fu-" after the fifth layer of white silk and confusion. "Funeral cloth."

"Oh so I am dead." He turns to her in the last robe, falling open from the waist down, and then his entire body is overcome with the heat of embarrassment and he pulls it tight to hide himself quickly. "Oh shit. I'm sorry. I- that's-" 

"Devourable." she murmurs, then she stands from the bedside chair where she'd taken residence and skulks out of the room in the same exact creepy way she'd entered, leaving Kihyun naked, very afraid, and maybe even a tad bit aroused. 

Kihyun wishes the void had swallowed him whole in the time that it took for him to wake up again. Wishes he hadn't woken at all. Wishes he'd been devoured by the dark wind he'd sailed through for so long that the memory ached within him.

**Author's Note:**

> wakes up as. a magical girl in an anime. the end. 
> 
> just kidding.


End file.
